Self-organizing Cooperative Dynamics in Government Extended Enterprises: Essential concepts

An extended enterprise is, by definition, both a system of systems and a complex dynamical system. We define government-run joint and interagency efforts as “government extended enterprises” (GEEs). GEEs comprise sets of effectively autonomous organizations that must cooperate voluntarily to achieve desired outcomes. Within the discipline of systems thinking, Boardman and Sauser have detailed a set of “differentiating characteristics” for systems of systems. We believe decision makers can leverage a set of four “canonical forces” to manipulate these characteristics to raise the levels of cooperation within a GEE and its operational effectiveness at the GEE level. This paper describes the concepts involved and postulates the relationships among them. A companion paper subtitled “Experimental Methodology” discusses a game theoretic methodology that executes a real-world case in an agent-based model as a proof-of-concept.